I Know That
This Practice Of Returning Laden With Native Spoil Is More Frequently The
Result Of Thoughtlessness Or Curiosity Than Anything Else.
The implements
appear so trumpery, that the European thinks they can be of little use to
anybody, but the bad blood thus engendered between the aborigines and the
settlers is greater than would be easily credited.
Another reason, I would
venture to submit, in opposition to this custom is, that in the case of the
blacks doing any mischief, no method of punishing them can possibly be
devised equal in severity to the destruction of their weapons. A tribe is
rendered more helpless and more innocuous by this than by shooting down
half the males, and I am sure that if they once found that only in case of
mischief was this punishment resorted to, we should hear infinitely less of
cattle-spearing and shepherd-murdering than at present obtains. I mention
this, not from any good-will towards the blacks, who have been causes of
much sorrow to me and mine, but because I am sure that a discontinuance of
this idle habit would tend to lessen the existing causes of friction
between the two races.
In one of the camps we found a blanket - not, O reader, made of the finest
wool, deftly woven at the looms of Witney, but a blanket of Dame Nature's
own contrivance, stripped by the aboriginal from the bark of the Australian
tea-tree ('Melaleuca squarrosa'), no small shrub, but a noble fellow
standing from 150 to 200 feet high, and generally found in the
neighbourhood of fresh water, or in the beds of creeks. The bark of this
tree is of great thickness, and composed of a series of layers, each of
which can be easily separated from its neighbours, and, in fact, much
resembling a new book, just issued from the hot-press of the binder. From
a portion of this - the inner skins, I imagine - the blacks manage to
make a flexible, though not over warm, covering for the winter nights, or
for the newly-born piccaninnies. The whole of the process I am not
acquainted with, but from all I could gather from Lizzie, the bark is
stripped in a large sheet at the end of the rainy season, the inner cuticle
of several leaves carefully separated from the remainder, and placed in
fresh water, weighted with heavy stones to retain it in its position.
After the lapse of a certain time, known only to the initiated, it is taken
out, hung up to dry, and at a peculiar stage, before all the moisture has
evaporated, it is laid on a flat rock, and cautiously beaten with smooth
round stones, which operation opens out the web sufficiently to make it
quite pliant, after which it is allowed to dry thoroughly, and is then
ready for use. These vegetable blankets are very strong, and must be a
great protection to the naked savages, but, despite the ease with which
they can be obtained, and the small time and labour occupied in their
preparation, but few of the gins have them, and none of the men.
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